Destiny Knocking

On April 15, 1956, which was Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israeli Independence Day, the outlook for the young State of Israel did not look good – not good at all. In the fall of 1955, Egypt, under Gamel Abdul Nasser, had begun to orchestrate a series of guerilla attacks, to which Israel’s Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, responded with a series of counterattacks. War seemed inevitable. With tensions escalating, Ben Gurion warned on that very April day that “the Egyptians were planning ‘to slaughter’ them and vowed that Israel would retaliate two blows to one.” (JJ Schacter, Tradition, 39:3).

As far as American foreign policy was concerned, the attitude of the Eisenhower administration was frosty compared to that of Truman who, you may recall, in 1948 recognized the new State eleven minutes after its founding. The State Department under Secretary of State Dulles sought to strengthen America’s standing among the Arab nations and to bring Egypt out of the Soviet orbit. America repeatedly refused Israeli requests for help in obtaining nuclear capability and, for that matter, any requests for arms. Given the perceived Arab role in containing communism, the importance of Arab oil, and a general detachment or even antipathy to the Zionist cause, Israel was understood not as an ally but as an impediment to American interests.

For the pro-Israel camp, as Steven Spiegel explains in his book on the subject, the Eisenhower years were not our finest hour. Rumors floated that the administration intended to investigate the American Zionist Council, an atmosphere that prompted the formation of an independent lobbying group – what we now know as AIPAC. As for American Jewry, we were in disarray. The administration became so frustrated with so many representatives claiming to speak for the Jewish community, that Assistant Secretary of State Henry Byroade insisted that he see them all at one time in one group, thus indirectly forming what we now know as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. (Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict, pp. 50-61)

As for the Orthodox community, active efforts towards securing Israel’s safety were few and far between. Perhaps due to the recent trauma of the Shoah, perhaps due to an unwillingness to collaborate with the non-observant community, perhaps due to a continued reticence to acknowledge the legitimacy of the State of Israel before the advent of the Messiah – or more likely, due to a combination of all three – political, philanthropic, and institutional support for the new state was not forthcoming.

This was the situation on that Yom HaAtzma’ut of 1956. Expansionist and hostile Arab regimes, a young state under siege against threats both big and small, an Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage, an American administration at best unsympathetic to Israel, and an American Jewry that was either unable or unwilling to articulate a clear, forceful, and actionable agenda towards strengthening the case for Israel in the public sphere. The situation was not good – not good at all.

Against this historical backdrop, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik delivered on that April day a breathtaking lecture at Yeshiva University in honor of the eighth anniversary of the founding of the State. The lecture is titled Kol Dodi Dofek, “The Voice of My Beloved Knocks,” a phrase taken from the fifth chapter of the biblical Song of Songs. It is easily found, not very long, and I encourage you to read it in full. Rabbi Soloveitchik, often referred to as “the Rav,” is regarded as the leading Orthodox thinker of the twentieth century, his presence having shaped generations of American rabbinical leadership. At the most basic level, Soloveitchik formulates a powerful argument for the obligations of Diaspora Jewry vis-à-vis Israel. In his assessment of his community’s support for the settlement and building up of the land, Soloveitchik states: “We have been remiss, and our guilt is great . . . But why should we search out the faults of others and seek to place the blame on the shoulders of secular Jews? Let us examine our own flaws and repent our sins.” (Fate and Destiny, p. 36) Referring to the Shulamite maiden of the Song who, despite being drunk with love and yearning, fails to rise to the voice of her beloved when he comes knocking, Soloveitchik enumerates the multiple knocks, six in all, to which Diaspora Jewry has failed to respond. The “knock” of the establishment of the State, the “knock” of the victory of the Israeli army over their foes, the “knock” of Jews being able for the first time in our history to defend – and if necessary, avenge – Jewish blood. So many signs, so many “knocks,” and yet, the “maiden” – the religious Jewish community – fails to rise, literally and figuratively, to open to door to let in her beloved destiny of Israel. Soloveitchik castigates his community for being miserly in demeanor and in pocketbook, for failing “to exercise the proper influence on Jewish life here [in America] and on events in the land of Israel.” (p. 39) Not only, Soloveitchik argued, must his community be unflinching in their support for Israel, but they must, despite profound differences with the secular community, find common cause and work together when it comes to securing Israel’s future. Soloveitchik’s speech was a turning point – a pivot for the religious Zionist community and perhaps for American Jewry as a whole – from a lukewarm, incoherent, and often divisive communal posture to a stance in service to a good much greater than the parochial interests of any one segment of the Jewish community.

And were it the case that Soloveitchik accomplished only that with this lecture, we could say – as the song goes – dayenu, that would have been enough. In my mind, however, it is a theological distinction that Soloveitchik makes towards the beginning of the lecture that is the key to it all. In confronting the horrors of Holocaust, Soloveitchik asks the question of why suffering exists; how is it possible that God could have allowed such trauma to befall the Jewish people? But unlike so many other theologians, Soloveitchik concedes that the answer to the question of suffering lies beyond human comprehension. Nevertheless, despite the lack of answers, we cannot be immobilized. We cannot be what he calls a people of fate – passive participants in the unfolding of history – much in the same way that Aaron, despite the senseless loss of his two sons in this morning’s parashah, must move forward. The Jewish people, he explains, must move forward from their pain and understand themselves to be a people of destiny – deliberately and consciously charting out a future. We will, in all likelihood, never understand the reason for our afflictions, be they personal or national. But we can, if we so choose, recognize the blessings, the hesed, in our lives and in doing so, leverage those blessings towards strengthening the Jewish people, the state of Israel, and the world in which we live. Israel is neither a byproduct of the Holocaust, nor for that matter does her existence mitigate the trauma suffered by the Jewish people. Rather Israel embodies the unprecedented opportunity for the Jewish people to author their own narrative and become – as Professor Ken Stein teaches – the subject of our own sentence and not the object of someone else’s.

Just days ago, our community observed Yom HaShoah and in just a few short days we will gather to celebrate Yom HaAtzma’ut. While loose parallels exist, we must be careful about drawing too close a correspondence between our moment and that of 1956. As Mark Twain once said, “History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” And yet, I am in agreement with my teacher Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter who observed that none of Soloveitchik’s fundamental positions are in need of being reworked, “only more fully understood.” (Tradition 39:3, p. 55) Could it not be said that our age, our moment of American Jewry, is also in desperate need of a forceful, coherent, and actionable stance when it comes to Israel’s security? Are we ourselves not in danger of the emergence of – if we are not already experiencing – a chasm growing between American foreign policy interests and the interests and needs of the State of Israel? Are we not bearing witness in our day, as Soloveitchik did in his, to a widening gap between the Diaspora and Israeli Jewry? Are we ourselves not guilty of letting the internal divisions of the Jewish people spill out into the open and thus undercut not only any semblance of Jewish unity, but our very ability to defend Israel effectively in her hour of need? Friends, we too are living through a turning point. Not decades from now, not years from now, but much, much sooner than any of us think, history will judge us and it will be the declarations, decisions, and deeds to which we here in this room commit that will determine not just the judgments of history, but the very future of our people.

So let us resolve here today not to be a people of fate, but to be a people of destiny. When it comes to Israel, the most strident voices are not necessarily the sane ones. Let’s model a community that is capable of standing with Israel, in thick and thin, left and right, Democrat and Republican. There are those in the community, filling my inbox and yours, who would have you believe that one cannot support the New Israel Fund and AIPAC in one breath and with one checkbook, as if seeding Jewish-Arab coexistence and advocating on behalf of Israel are somehow at odds with each other. There are those who would choose to turn New York’s annual Celebrate Israel parade into a circus of dissent rather than a display of Jewish unity. We here at Park Avenue Synagogue have the opportunity and, quite frankly, the heft, to demonstrate to the world that one can defend Israel in the public sphere, advocate for a two-state solution, and work towards a pluralistic vision of global Jewish peoplehood and see these goals as interdependent, not contradictory. After all, what is it we are all seeking, if not a safe, secure, Israel, peaceably co-existing with her neighbors, central to the identity of world Jewry, a world Jewry who are assured that their Jewishness is recognized and at home in the Jewish homeland? Is that vision a distant one? Undoubtedly. Are there differences in tactics and outcomes? You bet. But it would be a shanda of generational proportions if we in this room sat out this round of Jewish history because we were worried about those who would seek to divide us even further. It is a strange thing to advocate for, but when it comes to Israel, ours is an era in desperate need of the emergence of a sane center, a center with enough elasticity to house dissent, a center that is always able to work together in spite of our differences. This is what it means to be a people of destiny, to step up to the needs of the hour, to know that what we share far outweighs what we don’t, and to fulfill our obligation to direct the blessings, the hesed, of our lives towards strengthening the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

The final paragraph of Soloveitchik’s essay states the following: “Judaism has always believed . . . that a person has the ability to take his fate into his hands to mold it into destiny, into a life of freedom, meaning and joy, that he has the power to transform isolation into solitude, a sense of inferiority into a feeling of worth.” (p. 73) At the crossing of the Red Sea, at the base of Mount Sinai, at Independence Hall in Tel Aviv in 1948, in the crisis of 1956, at every juncture of Israel’s history, our people’s finest hours have occurred when we have declared na’aseh v’nishma, we will do and we will listen, we will mold our destiny, we will live purposefully, we will author our narrative, and we will leverage the blessings of our lives for the greater good of our people. So, too, may it be in our day. May this be our prayer, may this be our mission, and may this be our continued and shared destiny.